Author: Zen, PANews
Original link: https://x.com/PANewsCN/status/2096550004278079820
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In the more than seventy-year history of the NBA, the most dominant player is undoubtedly Michael Jordan. When it comes to the strongest team, people often have different answers - the 6-champion Bulls dynasty led by Jordan, the 3-peat Lakers led by the OK combination (Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe), and the "Cosmic Braves" led by Curry and Durant. Each team is a reasonable choice.
However, in the field of venture capital, there is no suspense about the ownership of the NBA's strongest team. The Golden State Warriors in the 2017-18 season already have the most luxurious resume on the basketball court. But looking back at this team's roster eight years later, you'll find something even more special: This is also the most invested locker room in NBA history.
Of the 17 regular season players that year, nearly 10 had investment experience. The most well-known of them are Durant, who bet on hundreds of companies such as Robinhood and Coinbase, and Iguodala, who made hundreds of millions of dollars on a single investment in Zoom.
Even "Israeli Jordan" Omri Casspi, who averaged only 5.7 points per game and failed to stay in the playoffs, has just completed the fundraising of US$250 million for the third phase of his venture capital company Swish Ventures, becoming the head of a VC with over US$800 million in assets under management.
If you turn the time back to 2017, they were just teammates in the same locker room. But looking back 1989, this locker room seems to have gathered a group of Silicon Valley investors in advance. Among them, the first person to turn investment into a "second career" may start with Andre Iguodala.
Iguodala, the "investment mentor" in the Warriors locker room
In the Warriors locker room, if you want to vote for a player who is closest to the role of "investment mentor", Andre Iguodala has almost no suspense.
Before the Warriors dynasty truly took shape, Iguodala had already begun researching investments. He once recalled that he first bought Zynga stocks through E-Trade. After achieving good returns in a short period of time, he began to ponder a further question: Since you can make money by buying stocks after the company goes public, why can't you get in before it goes public, or even when it is just established?
It was during this process that Iguodala first came into real contact with early-stage investing. Later, Jeff Jordan, a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, became one of his most important investment mentors. He not only introduced him to entrepreneurs and investors, but also helped him establish a judgment method closer to that of a professional investor: Rather than investing in everything, it is better to look for companies that you truly understand and can help with your personal resources.
By around 2018, Iguodala had invested in more than 40 companies through investment vehicles such as F9 Strategies, including Zoom, PagerDuty, Allbirds, Casper, Carta, Lime and Jumia, and entered the Jumia board of directors. In the following years, these investments began to enter the cash-out period. Among them, in 2019, Iguodala ushered in his "IPO harvest season" as Zoom, PagerDuty and Jumia were listed one after another.
Zoom is Iguodala's quintessential investment. Iguodala knew Zoom founder Yuan Zheng largely because of basketball. Yuan Zheng is a Warriors fan, and the two established a connection after chatting about basketball and entrepreneurship at an event, and Iguodala eventually became an investor in Zoom before it went public.
In 2019, Zoom was listed on Nasdaq and quickly became one of the most eye-catching technology IPOs that year. How much profit Iguodala made from his investment has not been publicly disclosed, but judging from the growth in Zoom's valuation and market value, this is undoubtedly one of the most successful early investments in his career. Iguodala later publicly lamented, "Why didn't I vote more?"
However, what really makes Iguodala special among that Warriors team is not just his investment territory. But as his connections in the investment circle continued to expand, he began to take the initiative to introduce VCs and entrepreneurs he knew to other athletes, and he also organized some investment opportunities for the players around him to participate.
In 2017, he founded the Players Technology Summit with his business partner Rudy Cline-Thomas to bring athletes, VCs, and technology company executives into the same venue. Later, "helping professional athletes enter the technology investment circle" even gradually developed into a relatively mature business model.
After retiring, Iguodala did not stay in the personal angel investment stage, but completely entered the professional venture capital industry. Today, he is part of the Mosaic General Partnership investment team.
From his earliest purchase of Zynga on E-Trade, to his subsequent investment in Zoom, to bringing his teammates into the Silicon Valley investment network, Iguodala has completed more than just an identity transformation from athlete to investor. To a certain extent, he was also the first person in the Warriors locker room to start "passing the ball" - only this time, it was investment opportunities.
Off the court, Durant turned joining the Warriors into a "Silicon Valley training"
For Kevin Durant, the most glorious period of his career is undoubtedly the three years he spent with the Golden State Warriors. In 2016, Durant joined the Warriors and formed a "Cosmic Warrior" with Curry, Thompson and Green that almost swept the league. In the next three years, he won the only two NBA championships in his career and won the Finals MVP for two consecutive years.
Off the court, a change that was not so noticeable at the time was also taking place: Durant began to truly enter the world of venture capital. The most recent time that the outside world re-attracted attention to Durant's investment map was after Nvidia acquired Hugging Face for US$12.93 billion. Multiple media revealed that as one of the early investors of Hugging Face, Durant's return on investment from this transaction may be as high as US$60 million.
In that "Cosmic Brave" team, Durant was also one of the first people to systematize investment in professional athletes. Back in 2016, he founded Thirty Five Ventures, today 35V, with long-time business partner Rich Kleiman. Strictly speaking, his investment career did not start when he joined the Warriors. At the end of his tenure with the Oklahoma City Thunder, the two had already begun to build their own business and investment system.
But the three years after moving to the Bay Area really changed the development trajectory of Durant's investment career. While playing for the Warriors from 2016 to 2019, Durant and Kleiman began to deeply enter the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial and venture capital circles, frequently contacted entrepreneurs, investment institutions and technology companies, and quickly established their own network of relationships. Companies that later became famous, such as Postmates, Acorns, Whoop, Overtime, Robinhood and Coinbase, also appeared on his investment list.
By the time ESPN interviewed Durant in 2018, his portfolio had grown to about 30 companies, with early-stage investments typically ranging from $250,000 to $1 million, including Coinbase, Acorns, Rubrik, LimeBike and Postmates. At the same time, the people around him who discussed investment have also become the most influential figures in the Silicon Valley VC circle such as Ron Conway and Ben Horowitz.
It was also during this time that Durant first truly understood how venture capital worked. He later recalled that his understanding of VC in the past was very simple: find a good company, invest in it, and then wait for it to explode. But after entering the Bay Area, he discovered that a venture capital institution may receive hundreds of projects every day, and only a few of them actually enter the next round of research. Investors need to constantly screen projects, research companies, communicate with CEOs, engineers and teams before deciding which companies are worth betting on.
This made Durant gradually realize that venture capital is not about looking for a "magic stroke", but a long-term process of continuous screening, learning and betting. This set of ideas was later brought into the investment field by him. Rather than trying to find the next world-changing super company from the beginning, it is better to continue to look for projects that you understand and are worth betting on, and then let time and investment portfolio amplify the returns brought by the few winners.
Eight years later, this approach has borne considerable fruit. The investment portfolio of Durant's investment institution 35V has exceeded 100 startups, covering financial technology, AI, health, media and other fields. In addition to startups, he has also extended his asset portfolio to professional sports, holding equity interests in teams such as Philadelphia Union and Gotham FC.
Although he only played for the Warriors for three seasons before parting ways with the team, these three years are likely to be the most far-reaching experience in his career in terms of both basketball and investment: he won two championships and two FMVPs here, and it was also here that he completed the transformation from an "NBA star who knows how to invest" to a systematic technology investor.
Casspi, who averaged 5.7 points per game, later managed an $800 million fund.
Compared with Durant who was already prepared to become an investor when he came to the Bay Area, the story of Omri Casspi better illustrates the impact of the Warriors' locker room on players' investment philosophy.
In the summer of 2017, Casspi joined the Warriors with a minimum salary. He played in just 53 games during the 1718 season, averaging 5.7 points, and was waived in April 2018 because the team needed to clear a roster spot for the playoffs. Although the Warriors eventually gave him a championship ring, in terms of on-court performance alone, this was just an inconspicuous stop in his ten-year NBA career.
However, for Casspi, who has played for seven teams, the year that had the greatest impact on his life plans after retirement was the 2017-18 season with the Warriors.
Inside the team, he saw Curry, Durant and Iguodala discussing their portfolios in the locker room, swapping startups they were approaching. On the field, most of the people sitting on the sidelines are Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VCs, and I often meet with these people after the game. Casspi gradually discovered that besides playing basketball, "picking winners and investing in entrepreneurs" might be the second most interesting job in the world.
Affected by this, Casspi, who entered the late stages of his career, started as an angel investor and successively invested in companies such as DocuSign and DayTwo. After retiring in 2021, he began to enter the Israeli technology circle more systematically. In 2022, he established early-stage fund Sheva and raised US$50 million to mainly invest in Pre-seed and Seed projects.
In 2024, he launched a new fund under the name Swish Ventures, which later absorbed the previously established Sheva. In January of the same year, Casspi booked a suite at the Chase Center, the home of his old team, the Warriors, to host Cognition AI co-founders Scott Wu and Steven Hao.
The game between the Warriors and the Lakers was very exciting. The two sides fought fiercely in two overtimes. Curry scored 46 points in the game. However, Casspi's attention was more focused on another "road show" in the box: Wu was introducing him to an AI programming Agent that had not yet been officially launched. The next day, Casspi had a long chat with Wu in Palo Alto, and soon decided to participate in Cognition’s seed round.
At the time, Cognition was valued at just $150 million; now, the new round of funding Cognition is seeking could value it at $47 billion.
Such cases include Upwind, a cloud security company that Swish invested in early. Its seed round valuation in 2022 was approximately US$65 million, and its Series B valuation has reached US$1.5 billion by early 2026. Cloud backup company Eon and AI company Applied Compute, which were early investments, have also entered the ranks of unicorns.
As of September this year, the Swish portfolio had only about 20 companies, eight of which had reached billion-dollar valuations. The latest fund, which just completed a $250 million fundraising, was backed by institutions including Sequoia Capital and U.S. pension and university endowments, pushing its assets under management to about $800 million.
I think when he joined the Warriors, Casspi was just a role player who bounced around the NBA for many teams. Nine years later, he manages far more money than the roughly $18 million he earned during his entire NBA career. To some extent, he is the best example of this Warriors team relying on "investment in culture" to obtain long-term returns.
‘Platform investor’ Curry puts investments into his own business empire
Compared to Durant, Casspi and Iguodala, Curry’s investment path appears much more low-key.
But that doesn't mean he entered late. Curry actually started to get involved in technology entrepreneurship very early. He participated in the founding of Slyce, a marketing technology company, and later gradually integrated personal brand, media, charity and investment businesses into the same business system through SC30. By December 2018, SC30 had participated in the financing of online travel platform SnapTravel; around 2019, its public investment portfolio had expanded to eight companies, including e-sports club TSM and smartphone company Palm.
Compared with Durant, Curry's investment logic is also different. He seems to be in no hurry to quickly spread the number of investments, but prefers to look for companies that can form synergies with his own brand, interests and resources.
The investment in Guild Education, a corporate education platform, in 2019 is a typical case. Guild mainly helps large companies such as Walmart, Disney, and Chipotle by providing continuing education and vocational training for employees. At that time, Curry had just established the Eat. Learn. Play Foundation, and education itself was its long-term focus. Therefore, when SC30 participated in Guild, it was not just a simple investment, but also a strategic partner.
Three years later, Guild raised $175 million, valuing the company at $4.4 billion. Although it is not clear the specific cost of Curry's holdings, and the actual investment income cannot be calculated from this, at least judging from the subsequent changes in valuation, this is a quite successful growth investment.
Since then, SC30’s investment business has further extended beyond Penny Jar Capital. Curry himself serves as a special advisor to the VC, and day-to-day investments are handled by a team of professionals including long-term business partner Bryant Barr. Penny Jar’s current investment scope has covered multiple fields such as enterprise software, medical care and AI.
From this point of view, Curry may be the closest to a "platform investor" among this group of Warriors players.
He did not completely transform into a professional fund manager like Casspi, nor did he quickly expand his personal investment institution like Durant. Instead, he chose to embed investment into his own business system: the brand provides influence, the business network provides resources, and the professional team is responsible for screening and managing projects.
From Clay, Chasing Dreams to Zaza Pachulia, the "list of investors" is still growing
In addition to Anta's endorsement, Klay Thompson, who formed the "Splash Brothers" with Curry, has always had a lower presence off the court than Curry, Durant and Iguodala. That's even more true in the venture capital world, but he's not actually far away from the game.
Clay entered entrepreneurial investment more intensively after 2020. In 2020, he participated in the financing of the mental health company Lyra Health through the athlete investment platform PLUS Capital, and subsequently appeared on the investor list of companies such as Dapper Labs, sports media company Overtime, medical technology company Carbon Health, sports social platform Sleepe, and AI voice company Wispr.
Another core member of the Warriors, Draymond Green, is closer to an angel investor in the traditional sense. He has been involved in startups since the mid-2010s, investing in projects such as orthodontics company SmileDirectClub, restaurant technology platform Snackpass, and agave brand Lobos 1707.
Unlike Durant, Green has never planned to form his own VC organization. He believes that he already has professional investors such as Bill Gurley around him, so he is more willing to become an LP of a fund, or to participate in specific projects with these familiar investors.
The Warriors' "investor list" still doesn't end here.
Center JaVale McGee's investment has a strong personal lifestyle component. After switching to a plant-based diet, he invested in Beyond Meat, plant-based snack brand Outstanding Foods, and restaurant brand Tocaya Organica. Beyond Meat subsequently went public in 2019, with its share price rising 163% from its offering price on its first day of trading. In 2020, McGee co-invested in Dapper Labs with Iguodala and other NBA players, and later continued to participate in its financing. In 2022, McGee also participated in the financing of Rye, the Web3 e-commerce infrastructure project.
Zaza Pachulia, another center of the Warriors, has been consciously learning business knowledge as a player. During his early years playing for the Hawks, he went to Emory University to study business courses, and later attended related courses at Harvard; after ending his playing career in 2019, he entered the Warriors' management while continuing to be exposed to entrepreneurship and investment.
It was around 2023 that his tech investing streak really started to form. This year, Zaza participated in the seed round of medical AI company Tennr, which was valued at approximately US$22.8 million. A year later, when Tennr completed a new round of financing, Zaza continued to invest. By 2025, Tennr has completed another US$101 million in financing, and its valuation has reached US$605 million. Among the investors are leading institutions such as a16z and Lightspeed.
In addition to Tennr, Zaza is also an investor in the AI chip company Cerebras. Cerebras has been valued at approximately US$23 billion after completing US$1 billion in financing this year, and has signed a large-scale AI inference infrastructure cooperation with OpenAI. In July this year, he became an angel investor in Neo, an AI security company. The company’s cumulative financing reached US$100 million, with investors including a16z, Bessemer, and Craft Ventures.
From this perspective, Zaza has gone further than many of his teammates in the locker room: He did not set up his own VC, but has gradually extended from familiar areas such as hotels and basketball training to medical AI, AI chips and AI security.
Power forward David West’s investments are more industrial-oriented, investing $250,000 in clean energy company Zoetic Global in 2016. Since then, he has not only held shares, but also entered the company as a consultant and has been involved in energy projects for a long time. After retiring, he continued to be involved in entrepreneurship and investment-related matters.
The path of backup defender Shaun Livingston is different from the above players. He had already tried film and television investment before coming to the Warriors, but his real systematic contact with VC came after he was influenced by teammates such as Iguodala in the Bay Area. He once went into Kleiner Perkins to sit in on investment meetings and watch startups pitch their pitches to funds. Later, he also became an LP on some projects of the venture capital institution Eonxi and continued to be active in the Bay Area venture capital network.
So if you look back at the Warriors family photo from the 2017-18 season, you will find an interesting result: at least 10 of the 17 players later left clear experience in venture capital, angel investment, or VC. It's not an exaggeration to say that "half of the investors" are sitting in this locker room.
Why the Warriors? The Silicon Valley network behind a locker room
Why did the 2017-18 Warriors gather so many investors in the same locker room? Perhaps what truly makes this team special is that it provides an environment that is difficult for other teams in the NBA to replicate.
The first is location. At that time, the Warriors were deep in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the training, living and social radius of the players was almost directly embedded in the area with the highest concentration of venture capital in the world. Dune Road VCs, San Francisco startup founders, tech executives and billionaires aren't distant names in the financial news; they're probably the ones sitting on the sidelines watching games and having dinner with them afterward.
Second is the team owner. Joe Lacob is not a traditional sports owner per se. He joined Kleiner Perkins in 1987 and has worked in the venture capital industry for more than 20 years, leading investments in more than 50 start-up companies, covering life sciences, medical technology, Internet and energy. It was not until after buying the Warriors that he gradually withdrew from the day-to-day management of the fund.
In other words, this team has strong Silicon Valley genes from the top. The Warriors' subsequent emphasis on data analysis, sports science, and team management techniques is somewhat similar to this background.
However, what is more important than geographical location and boss background is the network effect.
It is not uncommon for an NBA player to know several investors, and when Iguodala has entered the network of Silicon Valley VCs such as a16z, Durant has begun to frequently contact Ron Conway and Ben Horowitz, and Curry has his own entrepreneurs and brand relationships, these people happen to sit in the same locker room every day. As a result, the connections that originally belonged to individuals began to connect with each other, forming a complete set of interconnected athlete capital networks.
Casspi can book a suite for Warriors games and put startup founders, potential customers, executives and investors in the same space. And watching a basketball game itself has become a scene for establishing business relationships and completing project matching. To some extent, they possess another type of scarce asset: corporate executive relationships, media communication capabilities, and the ability to access some social networks that are difficult for ordinary investors to enter.
For startups, these resources are sometimes even more important than a check. The Warriors in the 2017-18 season happened to have these things concentrated in the same place.
Therefore, the Warriors were not only seen by the outside world as a "Cosmic Brave" team that had almost maximized basketball resources: four All-Stars, two MVPs, plus a group of highly qualified and experienced role players; outside the court, they also completed a rare gathering of resources.
Team basketball is the most distinctive label of that Warriors team: sharing the ball, creating space, and finding teammates with the best position. Off the court, they seem to be bringing the same logic to the investment world. "Universe Yong" shares more than just basketball. To a certain extent, they also share a ticket to Silicon Valley.